How to help a dog settle after boarding

The first evening home goes best when nothing else is happening, so choose the pick-up with that in mind. Sunday windows for overnight guests are 8 to 10 AM and 4 to 6 PM, and weekday windows are 6:30 to 9:30 AM, 12 to 1 PM and 4 to 6:30 PM; a morning collection leaves a whole day to settle. If the Pup Van brings your dog home, $10 each way in Rockport, Gloucester, Essex and Manchester-by-the-Sea, be there to meet it with the house quiet.

Read the report cards in the Dogtown app before you leave home, so you arrive knowing how the stay went. Then use a minute at the desk for three questions that set up the next two days: how your dog ate on the last day, when it last had a meal and, if you packed medication, when the last dose was given. Write the answers down, and count what comes back in the bag, food and medicine both.

Run your hands over the dog the morning after it comes home, the way a groomer would. Start at the head: eyes bright and clear, ears clean and not smelly, gums pink. Work along the body for any lump, scrape or sore spot, and watch the dog's face as you go. Lift each paw and look at the pads and between the toes. Finish with the tail and the back end. A dog that flinches or turns to mouth your hand in one place is telling you where it hurts.

The AKC's boarding advice says a dog should come home just as healthy as it was dropped off, with paws free of dried urine or feces, and that is the standard to hold. Note the stool on the first walks, the appetite at dinner and the energy on the second morning. Write down anything odd with a time, because a short, specific note helps your vet far more than a general worry, and tell us as well.

Some signs are not about routine. The Merck Veterinary Manual says the cough of kennel cough usually starts 5 to 10 days after exposure, sounds like a goose honk and may end in retching or gagging, so a cough in the week or so after a stay is worth a call to your vet, sooner if it comes with fever, nasal discharge, low energy or a dog that will not eat, which Merck links to a more serious chest infection. Call too for repeated vomiting or diarrhea, blood, a limp, a wound or no appetite past a day.

After hours, the City of Gloucester lists local and emergency veterinary offices, and the Massachusetts Veterinary Referral Hospital in Woburn is open 24 hours. Then call us at 978 491-5922 or message the front desk in the Dogtown app. What the team saw on the last day helps your vet, and it helps us plan the next overnight stay, whether that means a few daycare days first, a shorter stay or the Dogtown Deluxe bundle at +$15 a night on top of the $78 suite, with its memory-foam bed and daily enrichment.